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Labs are great dogs. Never really met one I couldn't or wouldn't live with. Hunting is another story. Upland hunting for me is a a dog working out and away from me, comes from my love of pointers. I like big ranging, hard running dogs. Most British or show labs i've been with just don't hunt hard enough for me. When it comes to duck hunting same thing. They're great sitting in the blind eating my lunch, but when it comes to charging water and getting the bird fast, not so much. Just a preference on the type of style I like.

Labs are great dogs. Never really met one I couldn't or wouldn't live with. Hunting is another story. Upland hunting for me is a a dog working out and away from me, comes from my love of pointers. I like big ranging, hard running dogs. Most British or show labs i've been with just don't hunt hard enough for me. When it comes to duck hunting same thing. They're great sitting in the blind eating my lunch, but when it comes to charging water and getting the bird fast, not so much. Just a preference on the type of style I like.

/Paul

I think there's a difference between show labs and British labs. Or at least a misconception. If you have time, check out www.oldoakretrievers.com. This is where I got my pup from, and they definitely are not show labs, but they are British labs. I could brag all day about my pup, but I won't. I'll just say he does everything you mentioned above.

I think there's a difference between show labs and British labs. Or at least a misconception. If you have time, check out www.oldoakretrievers.com. This is where I got my pup from, and they definitely are not show labs, but they are British labs. I could brag all day about my pup, but I won't. I'll just say he does everything you mentioned above.

I fully agree there is a difference, however in the 20 or 30 that i've trained of those two particular line of dogs i've seen a lot of similarities. the difference being perhaps bird drive stronger in the british lines. While some of them turned out to be good gundogs for their owners they just don't have the fire I personally like in my dogs. All comes down to personal preference perhaps...

I fully agree there is a difference, however in the 20 or 30 that i've trained of those two particular line of dogs i've seen a lot of similarities. the difference being perhaps bird drive stronger in the british lines. While some of them turned out to be good gundogs for their owners they just don't have the fire I personally like in my dogs. All comes down to personal preference perhaps...

I agree with most of what you say except the part about assuming everyone teaches basic stuff using marker training. Can you give a specific example of where Hillmann or Lardy uses a marker in their basics program? I have their DVDs and Lardy's articles, and I've not seen one word about markers. Marking yes, markers no. I will say that in Hillmann's fetch DVD, he says "good" at the moment the dog gets the bumper in its mouth. That could be construed as a marker, if he's properly conditioned it as a marker beforehand. However, in his soft collar DVD, he says something to the effect that you pop a bit of food in the dog's mouth and say "good" while it's eating it. That's not how you condition a marker. The marker comes first, then the food. It's classical conditioning. The marker has to precede the reinforcement. If you say "good" after you feed the dog, that's backwards conditioning, and there's plenty of published research that shows that backwards conditioning doesn't work.

You're right that marker training isn't new, when all dog sports are considered, but the people that employ it seem to be in the minority in the retriever training community. At least that's been my experience. There's also a big difference between just using a marker and using a marker really effectively. Also, even if you use a marker, it's hardly the only tool in the toolbox...at least in mine. Markers are great tools for some behaviors at some points in the training of those behaviors. I love using markers with young pups because it clarifies communication and accelerates learning. But once the basics are in place, I find little use for markers unless it's teaching stupid pet tricks to give my pups a mental workout during the long nights of winter. We are all easily amused...

Not basics, sixpack, basic stuff like sit, here, kennel, down---the baby puppy stuff you teach well before pup even starts basics, as well as pet citizenship. But I see that there are books about using it in gundog training that were published in 2006 and George Hickox I think was using it by then as well so a few have embraced the concept for many years now. I only started learning about retriever training less than 2 years ago so I haven't seen a lot, but I saw the clicker stuff at Petsmart nearly 10 years ago, learned more about it through Leerburg Kennels materials beginning maybe 5 years ago. And yes I taught my older pet dog some cute parlor tricks using marker training learned from Petsmart but that's about as good as we got at it!

Not basics, sixpack, basic stuff like sit, here, kennel, down---the baby puppy stuff you teach well before pup even starts basics, as well as pet citizenship. But I see that there are books about using it in gundog training that were published in 2006 and George Hickox I think was using it by then as well so a few have embraced the concept for many years now. I only started learning about retriever training less than 2 years ago so I haven't seen a lot, but I saw the clicker stuff at Petsmart nearly 10 years ago, learned more about it through Leerburg Kennels materials beginning maybe 5 years ago. And yes I taught my older pet dog some cute parlor tricks using marker training learned from Petsmart but that's about as good as we got at it!

It's a little bit more than baby puppy stuff and parlor tricks. Petsmart clicker training 10 years ago is not something to base an opinion on about current clicker training methods for retriever training. That would be like me basing my opinion on current ladies fashions on Kmart's latest offerings.

It's the same with ecollar training. You can buy one at Bass Pro Shop and read the brochure that comes with it and strap it on a dog and start training - that's not going to amount to much, either. That's not ecollar training ala Lardy or Dennis.

If you want to have a good discussion about clicker training or ecollar training, come to the table with a little more than parlor tricks and Petsmart, or Bass Pro and burn.

One reason I posted the thread on Lindsay getting 5 Qual Jams in one year is that it helps show that clicker training and R+ can achieve more than baby puppy training and parlor tricks. Not sure if you've competed at a Qualifying stake - I haven't - but I have an understanding of how challenging they are for any first time Am trainer of any training method. By the way, Lindsay wrote and said his dog Laddie got his first Qual Jam at age 3. Lindsay's life is not all about Field Trials, so it took until this year to get the other competitions under his belt.

I'm not trying to convince all newbies of anything as you intimated earlier. The tried and true methods are great! That's why I'm a giant fan of the Lardy DVDs and articles and am following them - with my own clicker and R+ twists and minus the compulsion force to pile stuff. It just is what is right for my hobby and my dog.

The cool thing is if I can come on RTF when things get complicated and say "how are you guys doing this and can you help me problem solve". I don't think we all need to be doing the exact same things the exact same way to do that - or to learn from each other.

Your posts seem to indicate that all of the knowledge about Retriever training is already known and tried and nothing new or different can possibly pan out, cause it hasn't been proved yet. I don't think that's true about any field. If innovation stops happening in anything worthwhile, we're in trouble.

It's a little bit more than baby puppy stuff and parlor tricks. Petsmart clicker training 10 years ago is not something to base an opinion on about current clicker training methods for retriever training. That would be like me basing my opinion on current ladies fashions on Kmart's latest offerings.

It's the same with ecollar training. You can buy one at Bass Pro Shop and read the brochure that comes with it and strap it on a dog and start training - that's not going to amount to much, either. That's not ecollar training ala Lardy or Dennis.

If you want to have a good discussion about clicker training or ecollar training, come to the table with a little more than parlor tricks and Petsmart, or Bass Pro and burn.

One reason I posted the thread on Lindsay getting 5 Qual Jams in one year is that it helps show that clicker training and R+ can achieve more than baby puppy training and parlor tricks. Not sure if you've competed at a Qualifying stake - I haven't - but I have an understanding of how challenging they are for any first time Am trainer of any training method. By the way, Lindsay wrote and said his dog Laddie got his first Qual Jam at age 3. Lindsay's life is not all about Field Trials, so it took until this year to get the other competitions under his belt.

I'm not trying to convince all newbies of anything as you intimated earlier. The tried and true methods are great! That's why I'm a giant fan of the Lardy DVDs and articles and am following them - with my own clicker and R+ twists and minus the compulsion force to pile stuff. It just is what is right for my hobby and my dog.

The cool thing is if I can come on RTF when things get complicated and say "how are you guys doing this and can you help me problem solve". I don't think we all need to be doing the exact same things the exact same way to do that - or to learn from each other.

Your posts seem to indicate that all of the knowledge about Retriever training is already known and tried and nothing new or different can possibly pan out, cause it hasn't been proved yet. I don't think that's true about any field. If innovation stops happening in anything worthwhile, we're in trouble.

Wow Jennifer, My comment about Petsmart was about my unsatisfactory Petsmart experience, not you. I did not even mention you in the post! I was responding to someone else!!!

The pom poms over the R+ stuff and clickers is coming mostly from RTF newbs about newbs. It just seems naive to me. And at what point does clicker training quit being new? Here I am being naive, I just assumed that everyone taught basic stuff using marker training. Again, color me naive, but my lab from FT lines delivered to hand (not sure what this means though), was tractable and bidable...I assume most are. The people I train with rarely press the buttons on their ecollars.

I am also highly skeptical that anyone can develop a "new" training program to build a competitive field trial retrievers by training a single dog or patting each other on the back on the internet for trying. The successful trainers who have developed programs for the masses have experience training many dogs to be competitive in all age stakes. Should the lone trainer be so lucky and talented to produce a FC using the "new" method we will need to try it on several more retrievers to see if it generalizable, so we are talking about not knowing the results for many years.

What we need is someone who already knows what the end product is supposed to look like doing the experiments. Otherwise it is like my husband in the kitchen, wondering why the first cake he ever baked didn't turn out after he undermixed the batter.

I bolded the sentence to say:
What we would need is a M. Lardy, Hillman or Stawski testing it out!!
And the chance of this happening is...